UV communication links are receiving greater interest due to some of the advantages of operating in the "solar blind" ultraviolet spectrum. Line-of-sight transmitters and receivers are not required since, within their range, a receiver responds to scattered UV modulated energy. Usually range is quite limited due to the transmission characteristics of UV energy in the atmosphere. A typical UV communication system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,493,114 by Meyer Geller et al entitled OPTICAL NON-LINE-OF-SIGHT COVERT, SECURE HIGH DATA COMMUNICATION SYSTEM.
UV communications systems of this type, however, should have a large area, wide field of view detector to assure acceptable results. As a transmitter radiation may be a single line, 253.7 nm from a mercury discharge, a detector need only be sensitive to a very narrow spectral bandwidth (about 0.02 nm). A typical contemporary UV detector filter, however, has a relatively wide bandwidth of about 40 nm. This permits noise at wavelengths other than the modulated, or information carrying 253.7 nm signal and can present objectionable noise pulses that interfere with reception of the information signal. The waveform of FIG. 1 shows the transmission characteristic of a contemporary UV solar blind filter that is used with an EMR solar blind photomultiplier tube 541 Q. The mercury 253.7 nm discharge line is indicated. It is to be noted that the spectral bandwidth of the filter is needlessly too large for the single line and that the transmissivity of the 2.53.7 nm signal is very low, only about one percent.
In the presence of intense nose sources, such as an arc welder, even a strong mercury line transmission might be masked with the arrangement described immediately above. FIG. 2 shows a typical photon count at the receiver for 253.7 nm signal at a length distance of about 0.7 km. FIG. 3 shows the photon count in a noisy background when an arc welder operates in the vicinity, note the change of scale in FIG. 3 with respect to FIG. 2. It is apparent that the arc welder nose is orders of magnitude larger than the information signal. operations in the presence of such a noise source are nearly impossible. Reducing the bandwidth of the filter to a value not much larger than the 253.7 nm line width might eliminate much of the noise.
Producing a filter having a very narrow width is not without its drawbacks however. FIG. 4 sets out a number of typical materials which, when properly fashioned with appropriate dimensions can decrease the bandwidth and hence aid the signal-to-noise ratio. Unfortunately, large single crystals are required to permit sufficient information gathering. This is particularly the case when nickel sulphate is selected. One of the drawbacks of such larger crystals is that they are difficult to grow and, as a consequence, expensive. Cost and technology obstacles apparently have prevented a wide aperture wide field of view detector needed for UV scattered radiation beyond a very low percent quantum efficiency at the frequency of interest, 253.7 nm.
Thus, there is a continuing need in the state of the art for a detector of 253.7 nm radiation in the solar blind UV spectrum for inclusion in a receiver in an omni-directional nonline-of-sight communication system requiring a large aperture, wide field of view capability.